Advice On Setting Up Large Tropical Tank

[rikwilliams]

Hello,

I am currently the proud owner of an 8x2x2 marine aquarium, with 5 foot sump and a huge array of equipment. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to find people willing to look after the tank while i am away, with the result that this year i did not go abroad for anything other then work at all. My heart has also gone out of it.

I have therefore decided to sell up the contents of the tank, keeping what i can't bare to lose in a nano tank. This leaves me with an 8 foot tank which is part of the room waiting for something to go in it. I had thought of lizards or something but they again would need looking after, and again there is no-one i know willing.

I have a 3 foot tropical tank, which i kept as I had an upside down catfish from a young lad, and did not want to give him away. Sadly, he died last month after about 15 years, from a whitespot outbreak introduced cos i added some neons.

Now what i am planning is turning the 8 foot tank into a simple tropical tank, nothing like discus just neon tetras and others. I am not looking for a planted tank in the sense of using CO2, i have had to have cylinders of CO2 for my calcium reactor and this scares a lot of potential tank sitters off. The 3 foot tank would be a quarantine tank.

What I want is a lot of plants, all the media and filter system in the sump and some ideas please from some experts. I have 2 eheim 1262 pumps as returns from the sump to the main tank, and these exit through 4 pipes at the top of the main tank. I currently have a number of variable speed tunze pumps in the marine tank but will be selling these on but have lots of seios as well if the need be for a lot of water movement in the tank is required (i am not sure how much would be??). I have an auto top up unit installed, i have metal halide lighting currently, this will be going (600 watts is not cheap to run), and advice on tubes would be well received. I have some arcadia starters already.

I also have reactors for running carbon, the sump housing has an intake which was designed to be full of bio balls (something i never used on the marine tank), and a large compartment for a DSB. I have a 50gpd DI water unit for creating the water for topping up and water changes, but might need to get a bigger system. This creates water with next to 0 ppm.

I look forward to hearing any advice, and thanks in advance.

Richard.

 

[col748]

I think you may have posted in wrong section (pictures), admin may move post when they see it.

You'll get plenty of advice when people see post, people know there stuff on here i'll let them answer.

Welcome to the site.

 

[Colin_T]

How long do you go away for? if it is only for a couple of weeks at a time then you don't need anyone to look after the tank, just come in a couple of times a week and check it hasn't broken. Healthy fish can go for weeks without food and most corals can go indefinitely without additional food, living off the light. You could just leave the tank as a coral tank without fish and have the lights on timers. Then you can go on holiday or away for work and come back a month later and they should all be fine.

If you get reptiles like lizards and snakes then they can also go for quite some time without food. Many people simply turn the temperature down and the animal goes to sleep for a month. When they return from their trip the temp is increased and feeding is recommenced.

A freshwater planted tank can be the same as a coral only tank. In a big tank 8x2x2 then metal halide lights are a good choice. You could probably run 3 x 150watt halides over a freshwater plant tank. If you go for fluoros then you will need a few due to the tank's height and length. Often it is cheaper to run the halides.
If the tank is well planted then the fish can feed off the plants/ algae and survive for a while without additional food. I had some rainbowfish that lived in a small tank for 8months without being fed. They lived off the plants & algae that grew in the tank.

 

[Declan]

I had some rainbowfish that lived in a small tank for 8months without being fed. They lived off the plants & algae that grew in the tank.

You serious? Is that not slightly harsh?

Talk about hardy fish..

D.

 

[prankster705]

Could make a nice predator/oddball tank

 

[Colin_T]

I had some rainbowfish that lived in a small tank for 8months without being fed. They lived off the plants & algae that grew in the tank.

You serious? Is that not slightly harsh?

the fish had TB and were going to die anyway, so I just left them in the tank to their own devices and simply monitored the situation.

 

[Declan]

I had some rainbowfish that lived in a small tank for 8months without being fed. They lived off the plants & algae that grew in the tank.

You serious? Is that not slightly harsh?

the fish had TB and were going to die anyway, so I just left them in the tank to their own devices and simply monitored the situation.

Fair enough..

I didn't doubt someone as reputable as you was being cruel to fish, sorry if it came across as that..

D.

 

[Colin_T]

that's cool, you didn't come across in a bad way

 

[rikwilliams]

Hello

Thanks for the replies, I thought i would post here so I could upload pics as it develops, but prob best if it was in another part.

When it comes to leaving the marine tank, everything that can be automated is, with lights on timers and an aquatronica computer controlling a lot of the equipment (around £3,000 worth of equipment). But the skimmer needs emptying every few days (the collection cup being the size of a big goldfish bowl), the fish need food every day in my opinion, the nitrate reactor needs monitoring and there are many other bits of kit.

The most important info for me is about the filtration that would be required for an 8 foot tropical tank. The basic rules for tropical seem about 1cm to 1 or 1.5 litre of water? This is a 1,000 litre system, so am looking for advice on the best kind of filtration, something that could go in the sump tank (which is about 5 foot).

Many thanks and happy xmas.

 

[Colin_T]

Nitrate reactors shouldn't need much in the way of monitoring. Many are just filters that have a very slow flow rate of water passing through them. You can also remove nitrates with plants and algae. Many big marine tanks have Caulerpa growing in the sump and this removes ammonia and any nitrite or nitrate that may have developed.
We had a couple of skimmers in the shop that needed emptying every day otherwise they would overflow. We drilled a 6mm hole in the bottom of the collection cup and fitted a bit of hose into the hole. As the black gunk flowed into the collection cup it would overflow down the piece of hose and into a 20litre bucket. The bucket would take a couple of weeks to fill up, however we usually emptied it every few days.

If you put some filter materials in the sump then that will work as a filter for freshwater. Have some bio balls or similar on the bottom. Have some sponge above the bio balls. Have some filter wool (Dacron) on the top.
The filter wool will trap all the fine particulate matter and you wash this down whenever it needs it (usually once a week or so). Then the water passes through the sponge where the very fine particles are trapped. Finally the water passes over the bio balls. The bio balls aren't even necessary as the sponge will hold a lot of beneficial bacteria that will remove the ammonia and nitrite.
If you have lots of plants in the freshwater tank, then they will use ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Many well planted tanks have little to no nitrate.

 

[rikwilliams]

Hi Colin

Thanks for the reply again. I agree that a marine tank can need very little maintenance, in fact on a weekly basis i clean out the skimmer cup a couple of times and clean the glass. The issue is if something brakes - a snail gets logded in the down pipe, a pump either return or skimmer feed pump or one of the 2 pumps on the skimmer brakes. It would need to be spotted that these things were broken and then quickly sourced and replaced - not easy, and not cheap. The skimmer cost me £750, replacement parts are just as expensive and not available from the local goldfish shop. If the lights brake, which they have done for me in the past, that again is hundreds of pounds to replace, in the mean time hundreds of pounds worth of corals are dying.

I have seen too many disaster threads, many of the holiday related.

So i am going to go down the trickle filter, the sump is set for bio balls being wet/dry so i will use those and some sponge plus the tank will have many plants.

Thanks for your input.

 

[Colin_T]

a trickle filter with bio balls and some sponge above it would be ideal and should do a great job at keeping the water clean

When you get the tank set back up post some pics in the planted section for everyone to see.